DIY Birthday Banner Tutorial

So here it is, as promised....a DIY Birthday Banner Tutorial. After searching on Pinterest and Etsy and staring at birthday banners for awhile, I knew I could tackle making one myself, and quite honestly there is something about the love that goes into homemade things that is important to me. I know that this Birthday Banner will be important to Abbie one day. It will represent so much joy of "Her Day" during the year! I wanted to make sure the Banner I made was durable enough to last for years to come so I couldn't just make it out of tissue paper.

My neighbor has sewn each of her kids a birthday banner that they hang up every year. I loved that idea....but dangit....I just really don't like sewing. I like it to a certain extent but its the machine that gets me and honestly the competitive and perfectionist side of me hates that I am mediocre at something. Sewing itself isn't that hard but every time I sew the machine does something stupid and I have convinced myself its because of user error :) I think I might take a class someday when Dave is out of school.

Anyways....on to the tutorial....I hope that you enjoy!!!

First you will need some posterboard (as many pieces as you'll need for the size letters you want)- I needed (20) 6in X 8.5in cards for this project (HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL...one letter per card). I bought the packet of 14in by 22in poster board and could make 4 cards out of one sheet...thus using 5 out of the 8 sheets in this packet (Cost about $2.50)

Next you'll need scrapbook paper in coordinating colors (I wanted mine to look girly but also very versatile to go with the many different themes Abbie may have for birthdays in years to come.

(Quantities you'll need for poster board and scrapbook paper vary...I wanted one letter on each card...I needed 20 letters: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL and mine ended up being 6inches X 8.5 inches. So you do need to do a little bit of math to figure it out but its not hard...I seriously just eyeballed it in the store. Scrapbook sheets are 12 inches square so I could fit two of my cards on them and I did buy a few extra sheets for the coordinating colors we will discuss later)- Cost 30cents each...on sale for 50% off at Hobby Lobby- I purchased 16 sheets total (Cost $4.80)

Next take two of your 6in X 8.5in poster board cards (you can make them any size you want to, I just knew I wanted them to be this big for what I wanted the end result to look like), and glue them to the backside of a piece of scrapbook paper. (I used rubber cement so I didn't get lines from the glue...you could probably use things like modge podge but I don't know much about that stuff. (Cost of Glue: $2)

Make sure all sides of the poster board are glued down really well to the scrapbook paper. Allow to dry for 5-10 minutes then cut them out. I rounded the edges of each of my poster board cards with scissors. To save time I glued all of mine at once and set each aside to allow it to dry. By the time I was done gluing the others I could start cutting apart the ones I had glued together first.

When you are done with all of your cards they should look like this. I laid mine out as a template for the order they would be in when I glued the letters onto them. Top row will eventually say HAPPY, 2nd row BIRTHDAY, and 3rd row ABIGAIL.

Next I took the extra sheets of scrapbook paper I purchased in solid colors that coordinated with my patterned sheets and cut the shapes I wanted out of them. I just cut out circles, triangles, and squares cause I don't own a fancy cricut machine and I can cut each of those out freehand :)

Then I selected a font I liked from Word and printed off HAPPY BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL. I think the font size was 250 or 300 in order to make it large enough to look good on the size of cards that I made.

Now glue your shape on the bottom 2/3 of your card. Glue the letter on top of that. Leave enough room at the bottom to make it look pretty or keep in mind if you wanted to add any extras to hang from the bottom of yours, that you will need room for those. I wanted to leave plenty of room at the top for mine because I wanted to lace ribbon through the cards to hang them.

Once I was finished applying all the shapes and letters, I punched holes in the top 1/3 of the cards, about an inch from the sides, and laced ribbon through them. I had a hard time getting the holes to be big enough for the ribbon to fold over, so I just punched holes out in a big enough circle to make the ribbon lay flat. They probably make some handy stamper that cuts this out automatically but I don't own one so that is what I did.

(Cost of Ribbon $1.99)

Tada! My birthday banner!!! It's so sturdy. The cards are very thick and I have no doubt that they will hold up for along time. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

You can modify your own however you'd like. If you have a girl throw on some more frilly ribbons and toule, you could even have borders or put stickers on or decals....its so customizable. This is just a template.

Total Cost was about $11.50)

Time Spent: An evening after Abbie went to bed...about 4 hours

Easy. Frugal. Most off all I'm glad I took the time out of my day even though our lives are crazy right now to make something that will mean a lot to Abbie later.

I'll be posting a DIY on how to make pinwheels soon so don't forget to check back! These will be used for her birthday as well. I was gonna just claim defeat and have someone make her cake but then I remember my mom always made our cakes every year growing up and that meant a lot to me. My cake making experience....well mostly decorating experience is minimal but you can't learn unless you try (probably should apply that thought to sewing as well....) so I am going to be giving a go at fondant in the next few weeks....I'm not doing the whole cake in fondant cause it tastes horrible, butI am going to try and make some figurines out of fondant to decorate with...we're doing a Love Bug theme, cause that's my nickname for her :) Oh and speaking of...

just when you think she can't get any cuter....BAM she does! I just love her to bits! Happy Bannering!!!